Jordan, Israel affirm resumption of Egyptian gas supply
Palestine Information Center – 11/06/2011
AMMAN — Jordanian official sources and Hebrew media affirmed that the supply of Egyptian gas to both Jordan and Israel was renewed as of Friday night after one and half month of halt due to an explosion that targeted the pipeline in northern Sinai.
Jordanian minister of energy and mineral resources Khaled Tukan said that the natural gas supply resumed for the first time after the pipeline explosion on 27 April.
He said in a statement carried by the official Jordanian news agency Petra that the Egyptian gas supply would reach 70 million cubic feet per day within the few coming days.
For its part, the Hebrew radio said that EMG, which imports the gas from Egypt, announced resumption of the gas exports but said, ”The pressure in the pipeline will be restored to its full level gradually in the coming days”.
Egypt supplies Jordan with 80% of its needs to produce electricity while Israel depends on Egyptian gas for the production of 40% of its electricity.
Salaita skewers liberalism in “Israel’s Dead Soul”
Raymond Deane | The Electronic Intifada| 10 June 2011
Steven Salaita is an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech who has written several books on the failure of liberal civil rights discourse to counter anti-Arab racism, particularly in the United States. In his new book, Israel’s Dead Soul, he evaluates the potential complicity between enlightened ideals and their opposite.
Salaita explores how civil rights discourse has been appropriated by Zionism, the belief that “Jews have the right to a nation-state in historic Palestine that is majority Jewish” (4), in order to legitimize cruel and indeed criminal policies against the Palestinian people. He also forcefully makes a plea — in the tradition of the late Edward Said — for the role of the intellectual as a dissident unaffiliated to power.
Salaita compiles a slew of quotations, some from impeccably liberal sources, lamenting the imminent corruption and/or destruction of Israel’s soul. Unimpressed, he opines that “[n]obody has ever mourned the condition of Israel’s soul without being deeply attached to Israel as an ethnocentric state.” The claim that a state has a soul is an attempt to idealize that state (in Salaita’s language, to “normatize” it) on the basis of “the nostalgia of an invented past … and historical cherry-picking” (3).
Liberal multiculturalism is too closely linked to the state (31), emphasizes tolerance and coexistence rather than political justice and equality, and therefore cannot be an effective site of restance (100). The inclusion and indeed celebration of Zionism within a multicultural context in reality “opt[s] to exclude Palestinians and other advocates of real democracy” (36).
Anti-Defamation League
From this perspective Salaita criticizes such Zionist organisations as Hillel, Taglit-Birthright, StandWithUs and The Israel Project. However, the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL) merits its own chapter. Founded in 1913, ADL has shifted over the course of the century from the worthy cause of combating rampant anti-Semitism to unconditionally supporting the racist Israeli state.
Salaita analyses the ADL’s own criteria for defining a hate group and finds that, for the most part, they apply to the organization itself: it perpetuates extremism and hatred, its beliefs can lead to violent attacks or terrorism, its actions can affect entire communities or even nations, it believes in racial superiority, it seeks to harm perceived enemies or to undermine American democracy, and it denies any holocaust, such as the Armenian genocide, that doesn’t involve Israel (67-9). Once again, by becoming harnessed to an ethnonationalist project, an ostensibly progressive organization becomes an essentially repressive one.
Turning to individuals, Salaita excoriates two prominent public intellectuals, Princeton University’s Cornel West and Georgetown University’s Michael Eric Dyson, whose scholarship is rooted in socially liberal traditions of black Christianity.
By stressing the liberal vocabulary of tolerance and coexistence while neglecting the colonial violence inherent in the Zionist project, West “decontextualizes the Israel-Palestine conflict … and reifies Israel’s placement in proper multicultural discourse as a legitimate exemplar of Jewish culture” (72). Not alone does West conflate Jewish culture with an oppressive state, Salaita writes, but he “implies that any type of moral transgression committed by Jews arises … from the corrupting presence of the Palestinians” (76).
Meanwhile, Salaita contends that Dyson reduces the conflict to competing moral ideals rather than “the settlement by foreign Jews of Palestinian land” (85). While Salaita concedes that the establishment of a homeland for Jews is in itself an idea “worth moral and philosophical consideration,” Dyson falls into the trap of equating this with “the idea of a Jewish state, as dictated by Zionism” (87).
Dyson and West, both of whom are constantly present on a number of mainstream media outlets, including National Public Radio and CNN, are singled out by Salaita as representatives of the phenomenon of political punditry, which he subjects to a stinging analysis. For pundits, “diversity and multiculturalism have become corporatized” and “can be used as marketing strategies.” They are “a propitious element of West and Dyson’s market niche, not an object of their critical attention” (91). Pundits are “vassal[s] of free market commerce” (80) whereas “all intellectuals should stand firm on the principle that colonization is never acceptable” (93).
It should be noted that since the completion and publication of Salaita’s book, West has taken an important step towards more radical advocacy of the Palestinian cause by endorsing the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Pinkwashing and “homonational narratives”
In a chapter called “The Paradise of Not Being Arab,” Salaita focuses sharply on Israel’s self-branding as a modern gay paradise, in contrast to the supposedly backward and homophobic Arab and Islamic countries. This process entails what queer theorist Jasbir Puar calls “homonational narratives,” (96) whereby some homosexuals are complicit with oppression (“heterosexual national formations”) rather than opposed to it (113).
Salaita notes that Israeli gays are not allowed to marry, that one rabbi has described gay marriage as worse than the Holocaust, that Israel is home to many influential US Christian Zionists who are adamantly homophobic, and that a 2009 survey “found that 46 percent of Israelis consider homosexuals to be deviant.” With typically caustic humor, Salaita comments that “[i]f gay paradise refers to a nation wherein half the population considers [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people degenerate, then maybe it is true that, in the immortal words of Meat Loaf, heaven can wait” (116).
In spite of these well-known facts, Israel’s foreign ministry enlisted Israel’s gays in a public relations campaign encouraging “harsher steps” against Iran in 2009. Salaita comments that “economic sanctions or military action against Iran … would result in increased persecution [of gay Iranians] in addition to the needless death of Iranian civilians of all backgrounds” (100). Ultimately, according to Salaita, Zionism’s crass message is “support gay people by becoming racists” (104).
After a lively digression on Zionist cinema, suggestively placed within a template provided by Joseph Conrad’s classic novella Heart of Darkness, Israel’s Dead Soul concludes with the provocative formulation that “Israel’s soul needed to die if the many peoples of the Near East are to continue living.” He reassures us, however, that such an eventuality “does not threaten Israel’s future; it portends the safety and survival of the Jewish and Palestinian people” (141).
While Salaita’s frame of reference may often seem narrowly American, the principles that he enunciates are generally applicable. European activists will easily be able to think of organizations on the ADL model, for example, whereby a seemingly progressive message is fatally compromised and ultimately negated by close linkage with the defense of Israel.
Israel’s Dead Soul is a densely-packed, sometimes knotty little book, that well repays reading and rereading. Salaita provides us with well-honed tools for diagnosing the errors of organizations and embedded pundits alike, as well as the weapons for combating them.
Raymond Deane is a composer and political activist.
More lies Weiner told us
By Lizzy Ratner | Mondoweiss | June 10, 2011
Today the media is once again aflutter with the “Sext, Lies, and Weinergate” scandal: Weiner’s wife is pregnant! His fellow Democrats are ready to dump him! His fifth lady friend has come forward! Hour by hour, sordid new details emerge, all breathlessly reported. And yet, as with all sex scandals, the prurient, puritanical thrill of watching a dog go down soon gives way to the feeling that the guy is getting it for the wrong crime. Sure the guy is a sleaze with a serious death wish – or is it God complex? – but what about the fact that he’s also a latter-day Jabotinsky who’s content to lie and deny for the sake of occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized inequality?
On Tuesday, Phil resurrected – and debunked – some of the more outrageous lies Weiner told during a March debate with former Congressman Brian Baird about Gaza and the Goldstone Report. (The debate was sponsored by the Nation Institute on behalf of our book, The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.) Today we offer you round two of Weiner’s tall tales and outright lies. Among his more outlandish claims: Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal and not all that bad; Gaza is not occupied; Hamas cast the first stone; and perhaps the biggest head-spinner of all, Israeli settlement activity is not taking place on Palestinian lands but in Israel.
Herewith, lies 6 through 12.
Lies 6 & 7: Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal and hasn’t caused serious humanitarian hardship anyway.
Weiner: There is a blockade that is legal under the Geneva Convention going on right now by the Israelis and the Egyptians on against Gaza. Why? Because they’re at war! I don’t like that, I wish they weren’t. They’re at war. At times of war, you do not let in things that can be used to build – to build bunkers, to do these other things. Fifteen thousand tons of humanitarian aid flows into Gaza each and every week. That goes in in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
Let’s start with Falsehood #6, the claim that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal. This is simply untrue, and the reasons are several. The first is that blockades are only, or at least primarily, deemed legal in situations of international and armed conflict, which the Israel-Gaza conflict most certainly is not. In fact, because Israel remains the de facto occupying power of Gaza – and this gets us to reason number two – it is required by international law not only to protect the civilians under its control but to guarantee sufficient access to food and medical supplies. The blockade, which has reduced food and other humanitarian supplies to a trickle, clearly violates this obligation, but that’s hardly all. The blockade is also widely considered to be a form of collective punishment inflicted on the people of Gaza for their support of Hamas – a fact that Israel has all but admitted – and collective punishment is not merely not legal, it is a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions. A war crime.
Or as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has said:
International humanitarian law prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and … it is also prohibited to impose collective punishment on civilians.
I have consistently reported to member states that the blockade is illegal and must be lifted.
As to Falsehood #7, Weiner’s claims that 15,000 tons of humanitarian aid flow into Gaza each day so life can’t be all that bad, where does one begin? Here? Here? What about here?
The devastating effect of Israel’s blockade has been well documented by journalists, human rights groups, humanitarian organizations, and, of course, Palestinians. The Goldstone Report also dedicated pages of ink to chronicling the blockade’s humanitarian and human rights toll on the people of Gaza.
But you know what? Why listen to all these sources when you can just listen to Israeli officials themselves, as paraphrased in one of the US cables released by Wikileaks?
“As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed … on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
Lie 8: Israel no longer occupies Gaza.
Weiner: And is Gaza occupied? Let me just clear this up, is Gaza occupied, Brian?
Baird: I think it absolutely is.
Weiner: OK, so right now there are Israelis in Gaza?
Baird: No, but there are US-made F16s and US-made weaponry and a host of other –
Weiner: But not in Gaza.
Baird: On any given day, Israelis can enter Gaza.
Weiner: Yes, on any given day they can enter there, but they are not in Gaza today.
Baird: I don’t know that.
Weiner: They don’t occupy Gaza today. Yet the Goldstone Report characterized Gaza as still being occupied.
This is a popular meme, particularly among Israeli politicians and right-wing Zionists who love to claim that Gaza has not been occupied since Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. But pretty much everyone else in the international community, with the probable exception of the United States, continues to regard Gaza as being occupied. And with good reason. When a population is hemmed in on all sides by a foreign power, its borders closed and policed, even its airspace controlled; when that power controls everything from taxes to currency; and when it pays the local population occasional, unexpected visits in the form of military incursions, it’s hard to claim that the foreign power isn’t in control.
Here’s how the Goldstone Report sums up the situation:
Given the specific geopolitical configuration of the Gaza Strip, the powers that Israel exercises from the borders enable it to determine the conditions of life within the Gaza Strip. Israel controls the border crossings … and decides what and who gets in or out of the Gaza Strip. It also controls the territorial sea adjacent to the Gaza Strip and has declared a virtual blockade and limits to the fishing zone, thereby regulating economic activity in that zone. It also keeps complete control of the airspace of the Gaza Strip, inter alia, through continuous surveillance by aircraft and unmanned aviation vehicles (UAVs) or drones. It makes military incursions and from time to time hit targets within the Gaza Strip. No-go areas are declared within the Gaza Strip near the border where Israeli settlements used to be and enforced by the Israeli armed forces. Furthermore, Israel regulates the local monetary market based on the Israeli currency (the new sheqel) and controls taxes and custom duties.
The Goldstone Report’s conclusion? “The ultimate authority over the Occupied Palestinian Territory still lies with Israel.”
Lie 9: Israel’s ongoing settlement activity is not taking place on Palestinian lands but within Israel.
Weiner: There are people who believe that settlement activity is going on in Palestinian territories. There are people who believe that. I don’t believe that.
This one is a real head-scratcher. As Roger Cohen, New York Times columnist and moderator of the Baird-Weiner debate, pointed out at the time, even the Israeli government acknowledges – heck, proclaims – that it is building settlements. So how can Weiner claim there’s no “settlement activity” in Palestinian territories? There’s really only one possible answer, but it’s such an extreme, ludicrous answer, it seems impossible that Weiner could actually believe it. And yet – well, let’s just run the tape.
Cohen: Where do you think the settlement growth is happening right now?
Weiner: What do you mean, where do I think it’s happening?
Cohen: You just said it’s happening in Israel, where in Israel?
Weiner: I don’t follow your question. What do you mean where it’s happening? It’s a matter of fact where the settlement’s happening. I don’t understand your question.
Cohen: Well, I’m asking you whether – you said it’s in Israel, as far as I know, the settlement growth is in the West Bank.
Weiner: I believe it is in Israel.
Baird: Tony, are you saying that wherever there is a settlement it is by definition Israel?
Weiner: I am saying that at some point, and it’s not going to be the three of us, but at some point, Palestinians and Israelis are going to negotiate where development is going to be able to happen, where the border exists; right now the settlement that’s going on is going on in Israel. That’s not a controversial thing to say. I mean, that’s a matter of fact. You may want in the future, where Israeli homes are, to say that’s the Palestinian border but that’s not the case yet.
Cohen: Congressman, where for you is the border of Israel?
Weiner: Where is the border – how – do you want me to describe it on a map?
Cohen: I don’t know, where is it?
Weiner: Mr. Moderator-of-this-Debate, how do you want me to do that?
Cohen: One border is the sea, where is the eastern border?
Weiner: The Jordan River.
Ah-ha! So there it is. Weiner doesn’t think that any “settlement activity” is taking place on Palestinian lands because he doesn’t think that Palestinian lands exist. He thinks that Israel sprawls from the Jordan River to the sea, which is in perfect accord with the views of Bibi Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and, well, far too many Israeli administrations, but just happens to contradict International law. In fact, the International Court of Justice has specifically found that Israel’s practice of building settlements — essentially, transferring large chunks of its civilian population into territory it occupies — is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Apparently, every government in the world, with the exception of Israel, agrees.
Lies 10, 11, and 12: Hamas started the Gaza Conflict by firing rockets into Israel; Israel merely carpet-bombed whole neighborhoods of Gaza in self-defense, a right which the Goldstone Report doesn’t recognize.
Weiner: Yes, it was terrible, it was a terrible, damaging war, but it was initiated by Hamas after 12000 rockets. It is a right of a people to defend themselves and you would not know that reading the Goldstone Report.
Here we have another doozy, a case of three lies in one. Happily for us, Jerome Slater has tackled all of them at one point or another in his many writings on the Gaza conflict and the Goldstone Report. Just read this and this. In particular, he has done a brilliant job of puncturing the self-defense claim, demonstrating how it is both factually and philosophically impossible. The fact part is simple: in the months preceding Operation Cast Lead, Israel and Hamas had a truce that Israel broke (on Nov. 4, 2008) in an attack that killed six men from Hamas; and when Hamas offered to renew the truce in exchange for Israel easing the siege, Israel demurred – and, several weeks later, launched Cast Lead. As to the philosophical argument, it boils down to this: “there can be no right of self-defense when illegitimate and violent repression engenders resistance—and that holds true even when the form of resistance, terrorism (a fair description of Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians) is itself morally wrong.”
As to Weiner’s claim that the Goldstone Report ignores Israel’s right to self-defense, well, anyone who’s read even a fraction of the document knows this isn’t the case. As Slater has written:
“First, while the report condemned the Israeli methods of warfare, it accepted that the purpose of Cast Lead was legitimate: Israel, it said, had a right to “defend itself” against Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks aimed at Israeli towns and villages. In his oped, Goldstone reiterated this argument: “I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within.”
So there you have it. Anthony Weiner showed up to a packed hall in New York this past March and spewed at least twelve big, bogus claims about Israel, Palestine, and the Gaza Conflict. And he clearly hadn’t read the Goldstone Report. But if his brother and sister congresspeople get their way, he might soon have a lot of time on his hands. One way he could fill it? By cracking open the Goldstone Report.
Activists: Soldiers stop farmers working on land
Ma’an – 10/06/2011
HEBRON — Israeli soldiers on Thursday prevented Palestinian farmers from working on their land near Hebron in the southern West Bank, rights activists said.
Israeli soldiers, accompanied by dogs, forced farmers from Beit Ummar to leave their fields near the illegal Bat Ayin settlement, where they were harvesting vine leaves and pears, Palestinian Center for Human Rights official Hesham Sharabati said.
In the same area on Thursday afternoon, Israeli soldiers stopped Mohammad Da’dush, 85, from spraying pesticides on his crops and seized his pump, Sharabati said.
Sharabati, his colleague Fahmi Shahin and popular committee spokesman Mohammad Awad went to the area to follow up on the complaints.
They said four soldiers appeared shortly after their arrival and took their ID cards, claiming the rights workers had entered a closed military zone.
Many more soldiers then arrived at the scene and surrounded the area, Sharabati said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was not familiar with any incidents in the area.
Meanwhile, settlers from the nearby illegal Karmi Zur set fire to fields planted with wheat and grape vines belonging to Ali Ayyad Awad, the local popular committee spokesman said.
Mohammad Awad said the torched land was near the wall separating Beit Ummar from the settlement. He said settlers, accompanied by soldiers, prevented farmers from extinguishing the fire.
I Am A Radical Antisemite And Am Proud Of It
Elias Davidsson | June 10, 2011
The meaning of the term “antisemite” has significantly changed in recent years. There was a time when this term referred to those who despised Jews. Later, the term referred to those who promoted myths about a global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Today the term “antisemite” is used by the ruling elite to lambast human rights activists who advocate equal rights between Jews, Christians and Muslims, the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the vision of a common, democratic state for both Palestinians and Israelis. The word “antisemite”, which initially conveyed a negative and even sinister meaning, refers now to positive and highly commendable attitudes that can be carried with honour. One may lament this change of meaning, but one should remember that a word does not carry any particular meaning. It is merely a conventional symbol that refers to external contents. By convention, society could agree to name animosity towards Jews “xakaculca”, democracy “zbzb” and elefants “democracy”.
Advocacy for a just and democratic solution to the conflict in Israel/Palestine is grounded on international human rights norms, including the right to equality and the right of everyone to return to her country. These norms are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (articles 1, 2, 7, 13(2)) and the Preamble of the U.N. Charter. This advocacy also seeks its legitimacy from the constitutional principles that underpin the Western democratic order. According to current terminology, as imposed by those who mould public opinion, the word “antisemitism” now refers to human rights advocacy and to the struggle for democracy. There is no need to combat the new convention. One merely has to adjust to it.
Inasmuch as the term “antisemite” now refers to human rights advocates and radical democrats, I declare myself a radical antisemite.
Elias Davidsson
Bonn, Germany
June 10, 2011
Pro-Israelis Turning U.S. into Islamophobic Police State
Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | June 10, 2011
The recent call by U.S. Senator Charles Schumer for increased rail safety funding and the creation of a “no-ride” list for Amtrak trains is yet another reminder of just who is stoking fear of Muslims in America.
In an interview last year with a Jewish radio talk show in New York, Senator Schumer said he believed that HaShem (an Orthodox Jewish term for “God”) gave him the name “Schumer” — which means “guardian” — so that he could fulfill his “very important” role in the U.S. Senate as a “guardian of Israel.” Presumably, Schumer’s God-given role also includes turning the country he is actually paid to represent — the United States — into an Islamophobic police state.
Americans wondering what happened to their freedoms since 9/11 need to understand the key role played by ardent pro-Israelis like Schumer in undermining their civil liberties under the guise of protecting them from terrorism.
On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Senator Joe Lieberman introduced a bill to establish the Department of Homeland Security. Since then, “the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress” has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans accused of providing “material support” to a foreign terrorist organization, i.e. groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that are legitimately resisting Israeli occupation and aggression. Lieberman, who was Barack Obama’s mentor when he entered the Senate, has even proposed a bill which would give the president the power to kill the Internet in the event of a so-called “national cyber-emergency.”
Although it would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joe Lieberman, Michael Chertoff runs him a close second. A mere 45 days after the September 11 attacks, the infamous 342-page document known as the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law. It was co-authored by Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Chertoff, whose mother, Livia Eisen, was an El Al air hostess believed to have had links to the Mossad, was appointed secretary of Homeland Security in 2005, after having been endorsed for the job by Senators Schumer and Lieberman.
Since he left public service in 2009, Chertoff co-founded the Chertoff Group, a security and risk-management firm, whose clients include a manufacturer of full-body scanning machines. After a young Nigerian without a passport — the so-called Christmas Day “underwear bomber” — was allowed, in the words of Haaretz, to “slip through” security at Schiphol Airport by the Israeli security firm, ICTS International (which was established by former members of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet), the former Homeland Security chief was all over the mainstream media touting full-body scanners as the answer to America’s airline security problems.
On September 11, 2001, within hours of planes having struck the World Trade Center (recently leased by an extraordinarily “lucky” Larry Silverstein, a friend of not one but four Israeli prime ministers), the then former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak dropped into the BBC studios in London to interpret what the attacks would mean for travellers’ civil liberties. “In this area, we will suffer,” Barak confidently suggested. “It will not be so easy to go aboard an airplane in the near future. But we have no way but to stand firm facing terror. Otherwise, all our way of life will be threatened.”
Later that evening, Benjamin Netanyahu let slip that the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans was “very good” for Israel. In particular, the mass murder proved to be very good for an emerging sector of the Israeli economy. In “Laboratory for a Fortressed World,” Naomi Klein detailed the post-9/11 “explosion of Israel’s homeland security sector.” Writing in 2007, Klein observed: “Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion — an increase of 20 percent.”
Consequently, Americans concerned about what “homeland security” is doing to their civil liberties need to be asking: Exactly whose “homeland” and whose “security” is being protected by the likes of Schumer, Lieberman and Chertoff?
It certainly isn’t America’s.
Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst.
Ministry: Surgeries canceled in Gaza due to shortages
Ma’an – June 10, 2011
GAZA CITY — Doctors in Gaza have been forced to cancel surgeries due to critical shortages of medicine and supplies, a health ministry official said Friday.
Ministry undersecretary Hasen Khalef said eye surgeries, and operations on blood vessels and nerves were among those canceled due to the lack of medication.
Gaza Health Minister Bassem Naem said pre-scheduled surgeries — including children’s operations, cardiac catheterization, laparoscopic surgery and bone and nerve operations — would be stopped.
The ministry would reduce medical services including laboratory tests, Naem added.
Khalef said dental clinics and general practice clinics would be forced to close soon, and that health centers would reduce their hours because of the shortages.
On Wednesday, the Gaza health ministry announced a state of emergency due to the shortage of medical supplies.
Medical services spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya said Thursday that warehouses had run out of over 178 types of medicine and that over 190 surgical items had either run out or were in short supply.
The health minister in the besieged coastal enclave appealed to human rights organizations to intervene to avert a looming crisis.
The Disinherited: Syria’s 130,000 Golan Height refugees
Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) – 30 July 2010
What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens living in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the Israeli narrative, they all fled to Syria, but official documents and testimonies tell a different story.
Israeli eyewitness: “[W]e saw a big group of Syrian civilians, a few hundred people, gathered in front of tables with soldiers sitting behind them. We stopped and asked a soldier what they were doing. He answered they were doing pre-expulsion registration. I’m not a softhearted person, but I immediately had the feeling that something here wasn’t right. I still remember what a bad impression this sight left on me. But it was, de facto, like it was [with the Arab populations] in Lod, Ramle and other places in the War of Independence.”
IOA Editor: As in 1948, the “Israeli narrative” tries to sweep Israel’s ethnic cleansing crimes under the rug. As in 1948, official Israel lied about the fate of the local population during and after the war and so did Israeli historians, as this story reveals.
Note: As is often the case, the original Haaretz story, in Hebrew, is longer and more detailed than the English version presented below.
Among the parts left out of the English version: Rehavam Ze’evi, then a general at the IDF General Command under then IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, in a War Room meeting on 9 June 1967, stated
“The [Golan] Height does not have a large population and it needs to be received [delivered] clean of its residents.”
To which the Haaretz writer adds
“The IDF did not receive the Height empty, as Ze’evi wanted, but it took care that it will become that.”
Twenty years later, Ze’evi — by then an extreme right-wing politician — wrote in a Yediot Ahronot article defending his Transfer [of all Palestinians out of Palestine] idea:
“Palmach member David Elazar [IDF General in charge of the Northern Command which lead the conquest of the Golan] removed all the Arab villagers from the Golan Height after the Six-Day-War, and he did so with the approval of Rabin the chief of staff, Dayan the defense minister and Eshkol the prime minister,”
all regarded as moderate Zionists, therefore justifying Ze’evi’s Transfer idea, which was considered “extreme” in most Israeli political circles.
Indeed, Ze’evi had a point: Historically, while right-wing Zionism (“Lehi,” or the “Stern-Gang” and the “Irgun” were associated with the war crimes of Deir Yassin, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine which followed was largely the responsibility of the “Yishuv,” the broad, mainstream Jewish community of Palestine, which was dominated by labor movement elements, not the right-wing.
This is still very important today: Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni — representing the current generation that came out of the school of David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin, all considered “moderate” — offer a political vision that is no different than that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who follows the the school of Ze’ev Zabotinsky and Menachem Begin, both considered “extreme”. … Full article
Bahrain to try 400 peaceful protesters
Press TV – June 10, 2011
Bahrain’s opposition party al-Wefaq says the Manama regime is to put nearly 400 people on trial over their alleged roles in peaceful anti-regime protests.
The party said that up to 50 people have already been sentenced, with penalties ranging from a short prison term to execution, Reuters reported on Thursday.
A Bahraini government official, who demanded anonymity, rejected the opposition’s statement saying al-Wefaq’s trial data was exaggerated.
“It’s much less than that,” he said, but did not specify any number. … Full article
Bahraini activist: Military courts illegal
Press TV – June 10, 2011
A Bahraini political activist says the regime’s decision to put on trial nearly 400 people in military courts for taking part in anti-regime peaceful protests is illegal.
“How can one hold military trials without the martial law, which has already been lifted,” Saeed al-Shehabi, leader of the Bahrain Freedom Movement, told Press TV in an interview Thursday night.
“These courts are trying civilian people while they should be tried only in civilian courts as per law,” he said.
“I know many people are being tried for taking part in peaceful demonstrations,” al-Shehabi stated. “So these trials will backfire.”
When asked about a UN report that said Bahrain has accepted a UN mission in the country to examine reports of human rights violations during protests, Shehabi said that the UN has failed in its test and it has so far done nothing despite several complaints from international human rights organizations of violations committed by the ruling regime.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has been urged by Bahraini activists to send a commission to Bahrain, but nothing has happened, the activist said. … Full article
Stop Scabbing for Apartheid — Withdraw From Israel Bonds “Celebration”
Labor for Palestine (US) – June 7, 2011
“[All of Palestinian labor] calls on trade unions around the world to actively show solidarity with the Palestinian people by. . . . divesting from Israel Bonds and all Israeli and international companies and institutions complicit in Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid.”Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS), May 4, 2011[1]
The undersigned labor, anti-apartheid and human rights activists call on you — Dennis Hughes (President of the New York State AFL-CIO) and Stuart Appelbaum (President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and head of the Jewish Labor Committee) — to respect the above call from Palestinian labor by withdrawing as “Honoree” and “Chair,” respectively, of the “State of Israel Bonds” fundraiser in New York City on June 13, 2011.[2]
For decades, top U.S. labor officials have effectively scabbed on Palestinian workers by investing billions — the exact amount has not been made public — from union members’ pension funds in State of Israel Bonds, a pillar of apartheid that enjoys tax-exempt status from the U.S. government.
Whitewashing this betrayal is the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation[3], and its “progressive” U.S. mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee.[4]
Obscenely, the Israel Bonds “celebration” on June 13 follows the May 15 Israeli massacre of unarmed Palestinian refugees exercising their right to return, the first anniversary of the deadly May 31, 2010 Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s arrogant U.S. tour.
Meanwhile, the world is inspired by mass, democratic revolutions in the Middle East that challenge U.S./Israeli-backed neoliberalism, dictatorship and oppression. At the heart of this revolution, Palestinian labor has reiterated its longstanding appeal for unions everywhere to support the growing movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
The BDS campaign demands that Israel acknowledge the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination, and fully complies with international law by:
* Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied since 1967 (including East Jerusalem), as well as dismantling of the illegal wall and colonies;
* Recognizing the fundamental right of the Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, as well as ending the system of racial discrimination against them; and
* Respecting, protecting and supporting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
BDS has been endorsed by labor bodies around the world, including the trade union congresses of South Africa, Brazil, Ireland, Scotland and the UK, and labor bodies in Australia, France, Canada, Norway, Catalunya, Italy, Spain and Turkey.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which plays a leading role in the BDS movement, hasn’t forgotten Israel was apartheid South Africa’s closest ally. And as veteran South African freedom fighters have observed, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “worse than apartheid.”
US workers have particularly strong reasons to support the movement against apartheid Israel. In the past ten years alone, the US government — with overwhelming bipartisan support — has given Israel $17 billion in military aid; over the next decade, it will give another $30 billion.
As a result, Palestinian workers are killed by US-supplied naval vessels, jet fighters, Apache helicopters, white phosphorous and other weapons. In 2008/2009 alone, such weapons killed 1400 people in Gaza, most of them civilians — a massacre condemned by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, including those that are Israeli.
Meanwhile, amidst spiraling economic crisis, workers in this country pay a staggering human and financial price for US-Israeli war and occupation from Palestine to Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Thus, following the May 31, 2010 Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, members of ILWU Local 10 in Oakland courageously followed the South African dockers’ example by refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
Their solidarity stands in the proud tradition of West Coast dock-workers who refused to handle cargo for Nazi Germany (1934) and fascist Italy (1935); those in Denmark and Sweden (1963), the San Francisco Bay Area (1984) and Liverpool (1988), who refused shipping for apartheid South Africa; those in Oakland who refused to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1978); and those at all twenty-nine West Coast ports who held a May Day strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2008).
Respecting the BDS call is a matter of basic labor solidarity. Indeed, just as trade unionists fight “replacement” of striking workers, we stand against the dispossession, occupation and inequality inflicted on millions of Palestinian working people and their descendants for more than six decades.
Rather than being used to secretly finance racism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and colonialism, union members’ funds should be transparently invested in justice for all workers.
An essential first step is labor divestment from “State of Israel Bonds.”
Notes
[1] http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/ptuc-bds-formed-6912
[3] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Histadrut-Briefing.pdf
[4] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/JLC-Briefing-Paper.pdf
Signers (List in formation — ALL UNION BODIES LISTED FOR IDENTIFICATION ONLY.)
Endorse this statement:
Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council, San Francisco, CA
Larry Adams, Former President, NPMHU L. 300; Co-Convener, New York City Labor Against the War; People’s Organization for Progress
Michael Letwin, Labor for Palestine; Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325
Brenda Stokely, Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Convener, New York City Labor Against the War; Co-Chair, Million Worker March Movement
Mohammad Jawabreh, Palestinian Progressive Labor Action Front, Ramallah, Palestine
Progressive Labor Action Front – Palestine
Sameer Matar, Union of Agricultural Engineers, Jenin, Palestine
Sam Weinstein, Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA), Washington DC
Marty Goodman, Transport Workers Union Local 100, former Executive Board member, New York, NY
Stanley Heller, 40 year AFT member West Haven, CT, now AFT 933 Retired; New Haven, CT
Joe Iosbaker, SEIU Local 73, Executive Board Member, Chicago, IL
Azalia Torres, Former Executive Bd. Member, ALAA/UAW L. 2325, Brooklyn, NY
Lee Sustar, NWU/UAW L. 1981; Chicago, IL
Steve Zeltzer, Producer, Labor Video Project
Noha Momtaz Tahrir Arafa, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW 2325, Brooklyn, NY
Steve Terry, ALAA/UAW L. 2325, Brooklyn, NY
Steve Gillis, Vice President, USW Local 8751, The Boston School Bus Drivers’ Union
Sherna Berger Gluck, former vice-president, CFA/SEIU 1983
Roger Dittmann, Ph.D., Former Secretary, United Professors of California, Member, SEIU
Jeff Klein, President (retired), SEIU/NAGE Local R1-168
Joe Lombardo, CSEA and Troy Area Labor Council
Bill Preston, President of American Federation of Government Employees, Local 17, Washington, DC
Bill Bateman, Coordinator, RI Unemployed Council
Burnis E. Tuck, AFL-CIO, AFGE, Local 3172, retired, IWW (International Workers of the World), current member
Mike Gimbel, Retired member of Local 375, AFSCME exective Board
Joe Balkis, Teamsters Local 705
Nathaniel Miller, IWW International Solidarity Commission
Howard B. Lenow, Union Attorney, Wayland, MA
Anthony Arnove, National Writers Union
Frank Couget, Shop Steward, National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO
Martha Grevatt, Former Chair, Civil and Human Rights Committee, UAW Local 122
Carl Gentile, National Representative, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) AFL-CIO
Jim Holstun, UUP Buffalo Center Chapter, NYSUT, AFT
Mary Scully, IUE-CWA Local 201 (retired)
Mark Clinton, Massachusetts Community College Council, Massachusetts Teachers Association, National Education Association
Marvin Cohen, American Federation of Teachers (retired)
Patrick J, Finn, Ph. D., UUP United University Professions SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Mary E. Finn, Ph. D., UUP United University Professions SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Manzar Foroohar, Delegate Assembly, California Faculty Association (CFA), Former Chapter President, CFA, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Former State-wide Membership Committee Chair and member of the state-wide bargaining team, CFA
Mark Richey, retired member, United Teachers of Richmond, California
Leslie Cohen, former SEIU Local 285 member
Dave Slaney, former President, USWA Local 2431 (retired)
Dr. Sue Blackwell, member of National Executive Committee, University and College Union, UK
Mike Treen, National Director, Unite Union, Auckland, NZ
Brian Kelly, Belfast Branch Committee UCU (N. Ireland: personal capacity); formerly IUMSWA L 25 (Boston), Carpenters L 33 (Boston)
Andre Powell, Delegate, Baltimore MD Metro AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, AFSCME
Amy Hines, Labor Relations Representative/Organizer, AEU, Concord, CA
John Penetra, Technician, CWA Local 1118, Albany, NY
Dennis Kortheuer, California Faculty Association, Long Beach, CA
Denise Hammond, President, CUPE 1281, Toronto, ON, Canada
Hanspeter Gysin, Unia (Tradeunion Building, Industry, Services), Switzerland
Sid Shniad, Research Director, Telecommunications Workers Union, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Barbara Foley, AAUP, Rutgers University – Newark, NJ
Janice Rothstein, AFSCME 3299, San Francisco, CA
Paul Pryse, Teaching Assistants’ Association, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Steve Leigh, steward, SEIU local 925, Seattle, WA
Glenn Shelton, NPMHU, Detroit, MI
Janet Hudgins, CUPE (retired), Vancouver, BC, Canada
Dennis Laumann, United Campus Workers-Communication Workers Local 3865 of America, Memphis, TN
Edward Stiel, IBEW Local 302, San Francisco, CA
David Laibman, Professional Staff Congress (AFT Local 4331), Brooklyn, NY
Stephen Cheng, Brandworkers International
John Dudley, SEIU, Branford, CT
Richard Krushnic, Steward, Bargaining Committee Member, SEIU 888, Cambridge, MA
Paul Field, Unite the Union, UK
Powell DeGange, organizer, UNITE HERE, San Francisco, CA
Jim Harris, former member, SEIU 535, Richmond, CA
Dr. Russell Dale, PSC CUNY, New York, NY
David Heap, UWO Faculty Association, London, ON, Canada
Bob McCubbin, California Teachers Association, San Diego, CA
Susan Stout, CAW (retired), North Vancouver, BC, Canada
David Klein, California Faculty Association (CFA), Los Angeles, CA
Gregory A. Butler, shop steward, Carpenters Local 157, New York, NY
B. Ross Ashley, former shop steward, former executive council member, local 204, SEIU (retired), Toronto, ON, Canada
Keith Sadler, UAW Local 12, Toledo, OH, USA
US universities in Africa ‘land grab’
Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out
John Vidal and Claire Provost | The Guardian | June 8, 2011
Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.
Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from “land grabs” that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world.
The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years. Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa’s largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers.
Researchers at the California-based Oakland Institute think that Emergent’s clients in the US may have invested up to $500m in some of the most fertile land in the expectation of making 25% returns.
Emergent said the deals were handled responsibly. “Yes, university endowment funds and pension funds are long-term investors,” a spokesman said. “We are investing in African agriculture and setting up businesses and employing people. We are doing it in a responsible way … The amounts are large. They can be hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not landgrabbing. We want to make the land more valuable. Being big makes an impact, economies of scale can be more productive.”
Chinese and Middle Eastern firms have previously been identified as “grabbing” large tracts of land in developing countries to grow cheap food for home populations, but western funds are behind many of the biggest deals, says the Oakland institute, an advocacy research group.
The company that manages Harvard’s investment funds declined to comment. “It is Harvard management company policy not to discuss investments or investment strategy and therefore I cannot confirm the report,” said a spokesman. Vanderbilt also declined to comment.
Oakland said investors overstated the benefits of the deals for the communities involved. “Companies have been able to create complex layers of companies and subsidiaries to avert the gaze of weak regulatory authorities. Analysis of the contracts reveal that many of the deals will provide few jobs and will force many thousands of people off the land,” said Anuradha Mittal, Oakland’s director.
In Tanzania, the memorandum of understanding between the local government and US-based farm development corporation AgriSol Energy, which is working with Iowa University, stipulates that the two main locations – Katumba and Mishamo – for their project are refugee settlements holding as many as 162,000 people that will have to be closed before the $700m project can start. The refugees have been farming this land for 40 years.
In Ethiopia, a process of “villagisation” by the government is moving tens of thousands of people from traditional lands into new centres while big land deals are being struck with international companies.
The largest land deal in South Sudan, where as much as 9% of the land is said by Norwegian analysts to have been bought in the last few years, was negotiated between a Texas-based firm, Nile Trading and Development and a local co-operative run by absent chiefs. The 49-year lease of 400,000 hectares of central Equatoria for around $25,000 (£15,000) allows the company to exploit all natural resources including oil and timber. The company, headed by former US Ambassador Howard Eugene Douglas, says it intends to apply for UN-backed carbon credits that could provide it with millions of pounds a year in revenues.
In Mozambique, where up to 7m hectares of land is potentially available for investors, western hedge funds are said in the report to be working with South Africans businesses to buy vast tracts of forest and farmland for investors in Europe and the US. The contracts show the government will waive taxes for up to 25 years, but few jobs will be created. … Full article
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The 52 Major Jewish American Organizations and Israel Celebrate Passover with the Slaughter of 25 Muslim, Christian and Secular Palestinians
By James Petras • Unz Review • April 8, 2018
Introduction
As of April 7, nearly three thousand unarmed Christian, Muslim and secular Palestinians have been wounded, over three dozen are in critical condition and at least twenty-five unarmed protestors, including children have been assassinated by hundreds of Israeli snipers and heavily armed troops shooting tank shells into crowds of civilians protesting their decades of incarceration by the racist Israeli state.
The Israeli government praised the ‘restraint and morality’ of the IDF, as did the fifty-two Major Jewish American Organizations (MJAO) who largely control the US Congress. These grotesque massacres began during the Christian Holy Week on Good Friday and Easter, coinciding with the Jewish Passover. The self-righteous officials of the MJAO and their relatives and friends broke matzos at joyful Seders as the blood of Palestinians soaked into ground at the fence containing the largest open-air prison camp in history, Gaza.
While tribal loyalties bonded the Israeli and Jewish American leaders, the politicians of the Western oligarchic electoral regimes refrained from criticizing the shocking display of brute force and even defended Israel’s cold blood mass killings of Palestinian civilians in their Gaza prison.
This paper will discuss and analyze the reasons for Israel’s willing Western accomplices and the centrality of its fifth column in the United States. … continue
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